i move slow and steady
by orpheus-under-starlight
Summary: (but i think like a waterfall.) —Truthfully, Byleth always stood somewhere between professor and peer. Not that anyone would be able to get her thoughts on the matter out of her if they tried. She's a little busy putting the pieces of herself back together in her spare time, putting the past into a verifiable timeline, collecting memories through daydreams. Claude knows as much.


**i move slow and steady**

(but i think like a waterfall.) —Truthfully, Byleth stands somewhere between professor and peer. Not that anyone would be able to get her thoughts on the matter out of her if they tried.

When the monastery is made livable again, Byleth takes to spending her free time in three places: Jeralt's quarters, her mother's grave, and the front of the Goddess Tower.

It's not anything like her old haunts. She still goes fishing, of course, and runs all over Garreg Mach, as is her custom. But if she had to put things to words (which she doesn't do outside the realm of her thoughts anyways), she would have to say that something changed while she was asleep. She isn't one to remember the past... she thinks. Why else would she have her memory problems?

Seteth has been offended on her behalf that Jeralt raised her without knowledge of herself for some time, but she knows enough to know that the way Jeralt was forced to raise her wasn't exactly his fault.

If anything, the fault lies with Rhea.

Byleth is and is not. Whatever Rhea wanted for her, she did not become Sothis. Instead she lives between—a pendulum caught motionless in midair, suspended in time, poised to tip either way given the right momentum.

She carefully does not wonder what someone who has been a tool their entire life ought to do given the reality of their situation.

Regardless. Now she half-lives in Jeralt's room, sifting through the morass of what must be ages for memories of him caring for her in what had to have been childhood; his diary, which she willingly lent to Claude, mysteriously made its way back into the room after the third time Claude came looking and found her curled up on Jeralt's bed, eyes wide and unseeing.

"Are you doing alright?" he asks, the fourth time it happens.

Byleth isn't sure how to answer. Jeralt is the only person she's ever cried over. "...He was my father?"

Claude looks her over, his face a cross between amusement, concern, and apprehension. "That really shouldn't sound so much like a question, you know."

She considers. When it comes to most things like this, nine times out of ten, she would remain silent. But he's not really her student now. "He did raise me."

"He did?" Claude's eyebrows raise. "You remember? That's news to me."

"I fell into a river once," she recounts, eyes tracing the patterned wood of the ceiling. "He pulled me out. I was a child. It came to me while I was sleeping."

"Huh." Her former student considers that. She considers him. His brows are furrowed in that familiar, slightly vexed look she seems to inspire in him whenever it comes to matters of her past; the planes of his handsome face seem sharper in the evening light. Something throbs deep inside her that she still does not care to name. Finally, he looks up at her, a hint of knowing passing through his eyes. "So you're trying to remember. Is that what this is all about?"

He is an endless series of questions when it comes to her. Byleth thinks she doesn't mind half as much, if he keeps looking at her like that, keeps sharing his dreams with her. "Maybe so."

"All this time, and you're still a tapestry of mysteries, my friend." Claude leans back in Jeralt's chair, considering her just as she is considering him. It occurs to her that perhaps this would be considered improper by some.

But he doesn't seem to care, exactly. And neither does she.

One of the first things he'd asked her upon her return had been _do you remember the night of the ball, five years ago?_

She did. She does. He was attached to that braid that dangled from the side of his hair, and he was somewhere between a boy that had been bloodless and the man that never forgets that his enemies are human, too. Even then, he looked at her the way he's looking at her now; like there is an endless universe in her, like she is the stars that he so revered in his childhood, like she is the key to all his hopes. Like he needs her.

When did that happen? Was it somewhere between her catching on to his library jaunts and her father's death, or was it after?

Byleth is not a fool, even though she allows herself to be used. She is not Sothis.

Neither is she fully human.

_Incarnation,_ Seteth said, when she wasn't meant to overhear.

_Vessel,_ Rhea told Seteth. _One who will become her._

Claude was right to wonder about her when they first met.

"Teach?" Claude sounds alarmed. She looks at him with a quizzical frown. He leans forward and down, gloved thumbs pausing and then brushing over her face. They come away wet. "You're crying."

His voice is soft in a way it never quite is. Byleth blinks—sure enough, wet lashes—and reaches up, clasping the hand that lingers on her, keeping the rough texture of his gloves and his human warmth there. "So I am."

"You loved him, then."

She closes her eyes. "Before I came here, I knew two things. The sword, and Jeralt. He taught me to use the sword... I think."

"But he wasn't your whole world." It sounds a little bit like a question—a shot in the dark, someone who has some of the information, but not all of it.

"No. Somehow, I always knew... there was something else waiting."

Claude smiles. "Sounds like Teach."

Time winds on, and the moment starts to pass. Byleth closes her eyes again. His hand falls away from her face. She makes a choice. "There's more."

"Yeah?"

"When my father died... I tried to save him." The memory is at once unpleasant and forcibly removed from her, as if she is watching it through a very distant looking glass. "I rewound the clock. But it wasn't enough. A man stopped me. One of those who slither in the dark. He teleported away with Monica... with Kronya."

He sits back, digesting that, aware that she's finally giving him a piece of the puzzle that he's been waiting for. "You... turned back the clock? You went back in time?"

"Yes. I've only had cause for it once before. That was when I met the girl. Sothis."

When she looks over, Claude has buried his face in one of his hands. He's looking at her through a slit between his fingers. In the space between moments, he's somehow managed to artfully tousle his hair so the stray strands fall across his face and accentuate his cheekbones. Always keen on the dramatic and obtuse with his flirting—

Unaccountably, her face grows hot. It's not the time for it, but when is it ever?

"You know," Claude says, conversational, "when I was younger, I dreamed about a lot of things. But I'm pretty sure I never once dreamed that my closest ally in the future would be my mysterious, time traveling, all-powerful, drop-dead gorgeous mercenary of a professor." His eyes flicker to his hand for a second. "_Former_ professor."

"...I'm not all-powerful." It takes her a very long moment to respond, a moment in which she is sure Sothis would have chimed in, if she had the wherewithal to do so. _(Ugh! Centuries pass, and mortals become even soppier. I did not think it possible, but here we see it is true. Kiss him already, if you please, just spare me these little games—)_

"But you are, apparently, capable of time travel."

Byleth only nods. What else is the Divine Pulse if not that?

"Okaaay." He considers that. "Have you... used it since coming to the monastery? Aside from Jeralt's death?"

She shakes her head. "You were exceptional students. And anything deeply important couldn't be averted."

"Not even the battle five years ago?"

"No. I fell off a cliff."

Claude's eyes widen. "You... what?"

"Fell off a cliff," she repeats. "It collapsed under me while I was fighting."

"You didn't tell me _that."_ He sounds very nearly accusing, and his fingers twitch like he wants to check her over for hidden injuries, but he stays where he is.

She wracks her brain for a reason why she might've neglected to do so and comes up with several reasons, none of which he would consider an actual answer. So she shrugs, sits up, and swings her knees over the edge of the bed. "I was still waking up."

"You really do mean that." Claude has always had a knack for looking as if he's peering into your soul to figure something out. He was being _polite,_ she realizes, when he refrained from subjecting her to that quite as overtly, before. "You fell off a cliff, disappeared from our sight, and you were asleep for five years before... returning... to us... _Huh."_

"It was supposed to be the millennium festival," she agrees at the poleaxed look of realization on his face.

He leans back in his chair and lets out a heavy sigh. "What did Rhea _do_ to you as a child, Teach?"

"Only she knows for sure." It's not an unfamiliar repartee at this point, although Byleth can certainly guess and Claude has made several rather educated guesses with information gained by means neither of them should technically be aware of. Unfortunately for any idea of morality that had a hope between the two of them, the wager they have made together about Fodlan necessitates leaving behind ideas like common sense.

(And it is their wager. She might leave most of the talking to him, but realistically, they've been operating as one unit since... oh... around when Flayn disappeared. Probably even before then, if on a lesser scale.)

"We'll find her. That's part of our agreement with the Knights of Seiros, after all."

Byleth shrugs. Whether she does or doesn't want to know, Claude does want to know—albeit at least partially for her sake.

_You and me, Teach. We can go anywhere. Do anything. _

_I hope that you always walk in step with me... at least until the day comes when we can look out at the peaceful world we've built. Together._

Together, was it?

...She likes the sound of that. Perhaps more than she should. Enough so to happily walk in step with him for the rest of his days.

"Claude," she says, and his eyes drift to hers. She holds her hand out to him. "Come with me."

He takes both her hands and pulls her to her feet. "Where to?"

"Not far." She smiles at the mystified look on his face, and then she smiles wider when he comes to the visible realization that he's caused it.

It feels good, having control over herself. Who knows in full why Rhea decided she was to become a professor to this lot? Probably, again, only the woman herself, who has lived many long years and has many old secrets. Whatever the case may be, Sothis becoming a part of her... changed her. The fog that was omnipresent in her mind has begun to clear with each passing day—to the point that she can even recognize it as something that was a fog at all, rather than a sleep without end, pressed in on all sides by a downy blackness that lulls consciousness into oblivion.

What is Sothis living through, even now? Is a god still a god when they have willingly given themselves up to aid a child lost in that dark?

...How much of herself is the goddess who was meant to inhabit her?

Her train of thought is broken by Claude threading his arm through hers. She gives him an amused look, to which he only returns a smile that makes something spark low in her belly.

"You did say it wasn't far," he teases.

Byleth only gives a short hum of acknowledgment.

He'll see when they have to climb the stairs.

* * *

The tallest point in the monastery is not the Goddess Tower, though it looms large in legend. No—it's actually the watchtower facing south, nearest the entrance to the second floor dormitories, and it has several more flights of stairs than is strictly reasonable.

"Who, exactly, built this again?" Claude wonders when they make it to the watch room at the top. "And what is it up here that attracted your interest?"

Byleth crosses over to the window and gestures for him to look out with her. He comes to stand close behind her, closer than is strictly necessary, and fumbles with where his hands ought to go for a moment before one lands on the window frame and the other on her hip. His heartbeat pulses against her shoulder, quick and insistent, but steady as well—a feeling more than a sound, something that goes along with the rise and fall of his chest.

The only times she's ever known her own heartbeat were twofold: once when her father was murdered, and then again in those transcendental moments when Sothis merged with her.

"You told me once that you watched the stars as a child," she says, and if she leans into his touch, settles back against his chest, there are only the birds to see it. "I watched evening fall more times than I can count. Jeralt put me on evening watch when we made camp on our missions. While his men debriefed and talked tactics, I listened."

"That makes sense. I don't know if I've ever told you this in so many words, but you don't think at all like the Fodlan nobles when it comes to warfare. You're a mercenary through and through. And by now, you've probably seen more battle in your lifetime than most military tacticians of our day have seen in twenty-five years." She feels him brush an affectionate (if slightly hesitant) thumb over her hip, an experiment and a scheme and a sliver of honesty all in one, and abruptly feels that she may need to rend the stars if he doesn't get the picture that he's welcome to do so whenever _soon._

But there's still more that needs to be clear between them. "Yes, an experienced mercenary. One accustomed to taking risks."

"...I know." Claude's sigh ruffles her hair as he drops the pretense of levity and rests his forehead against the back of her head. "And I'll do whatever's necessary for us to win, believe me. Haven't I been doing that already?"

"You have. But if you need to use me, then use me. I'm a resource."

She permits him to turn her around to look him and his frown in the eye. "Teach... no, Byleth. My friend. Please understand that I don't want to do that lightly. You may not be all-powerful, but you are powerful—in more ways than just the one. You became a symbol just by being in the right place at the right time. Or maybe the wrong place at the wrong time... anyways. I know you know that. And together, you and I _have_ used that. But I like to think it's been a product of the both of us. Something you're an active participant in, rather than it being decided for you. If it isn't, tell me. We'll work it out together."

"...Huh." Byleth reaches up and cups his face with her hands, a curious warmth welling up in her chest and unfurling like leaves in the spring. "Claude... I'm glad it was you. Glad that of all the paths I could have taken, I ended up on the one where you would walk alongside me."

"I should be saying that to you," he murmurs. "And—I don't have any objections to you manhandling my face—you're very welcome to, in fact, along with a whole host of other things—but it is important that I hear a straight answer from you for once, at least about this. How does being our symbol make you feel?"

It only requires a moment of thought. "It's useful. But very few people would ask to be made into one. As long as you keep our promise..."

"To make both our dreams come true, and look at the peaceful world we've built together?" Claude draws her close, his arm around the small of her back, his eyes for once matching his smile for sincerity.

She lets one hand slide into his hair, just like she's wanted to do for what feels like ages. "Exactly that."

"You know, I think that can be arranged," he says, and finally—finally—kisses her, a sensation unlike anything she's ever experienced, even inheriting the power of a dead god. His lips are warm and soft and vital, sparking something in her that runs hot like white fire in her veins and doesn't abate, and then one of them shifts, and—

His mouth slants across hers at a new angle. She gasps. The noise that draws out of him is somewhere between a laugh and a groan; he pulls her into his arms, presses her up flush against him, and somewhere distantly she knows that her back is hitting one of the pillars framing the observation windows, but his hand is cushioning the back of her head and her whole world is narrowing in to Claude, Claude, Claude: his eyes, his lips, the shift of his hips against hers, every last bit of his face she can see as the twilight deepens into night.

"Claude," she whispers, and kisses him again. The corner of his jaw, this time. "Claude—"

"C'mon, now," he says. His voice is low and just a little hoarse. "You'll make a guy blush."

She pulls on his hair because they both know very damn well how red his face is. It earns her the singular pleasure of sending a full-bodied jolt through him and forcing out an involuntary groan, and she wants _more,_ and he's so willing to accommodate, pulling her up to hook her legs around his hips. The friction when they move against each other burns through to her core, forces noise out of both of them.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she thinks, half ablaze with every new sensation, _how long ago did I think of doing this?_ He makes a smug noise somewhere around her neck, where he's pulled away the collar of her greatcoat to press searing kisses on the side of her throat.

"How long would that be, exactly?" he asks, voice too fierce to be gleeful and too genuinely pleased to be false, which is the greater indicator to her that she actually said that out loud.

Byleth starts to speak, but he presses a softer, chaster kiss to her throat, and she has to stop and draw in a shuddering breath at the weight of that before she can continue. "Probably—for longer than you would like."

"Oh, I dunno, Teach. Full disclosure: I've wanted to end up in this situation since about the third time you had me over for tea, but you've always been too important for me to scheme my way into this. But—tea. Remember how we had to get up and rescue Ignatz from the bathhouse halfway through?"

"And we both ended up soaked." Her hands have been _itching_ to roam bare skin. To remedy that, she starts with his cravat. She glances up at him for permission and finds herself unable to look away: Claude is radiant to her in the cool light slowly filtering in through the window, his eyes lit by the rising moon, wearing his true emotions on his face in full for perhaps the first time ever in her sight. What she sees rocks her to her very core. Byleth is no stranger to the travails and pitfalls that emotion brings with it, even if she's never been the most expressive person alive.

What shocks her more than anything is that—the things she sees in him are the things she knows to be true in herself, his heart facing hers like a reflecting mirror, and suddenly there's a lump in her throat that she has to force words past. "You... you asked me, in passing, why I took on the Golden Deer when I joined. If I chose your house because you were there. You didn't mean it in the slightest, but it was true."

He doesn't look entirely shocked. Trust Claude to pick up on things she herself never noticed until far later. "I thought it might be something like that..."

"I was as curious about you as you were about me." She draws in a shaky breath. The fire within simmers, still sparking with the minute shift of clothing against skin, with his hands holding on to her. "I... only had my father, before. No one else. I command his men now, but they kept me at arms' length—I remember—I was the child Jeralt found somewhere, his dead-eyed apprentice. They didn't really think I was his child. Or that I was human, which is fair enough, now. When we rescued you in Remire Village, you looked at me because you were sizing me up. Evaluating me. But you looked at me like another human being and treated me like one, even when you saw what I could do, even though you saw me as a potential asset. And I wanted to know why you would do that... which grew into a certain fondness, and now..."

With a suddenness that startles her a bit, he locks his arms around her back and sits them down on the bench. Once they're settled in this new position, he cups her face in both hands and looks her square in the eye.

"You _are_ human," he says firmly. Even when all he had were the missing pieces of a puzzle she didn't have answers for, he was always able to catch wind of her darker currents with an uncanny accuracy. "No matter what Rhea did to you, no matter the power you possess, you, Byleth Eisner, are human. I don't doubt that now, knowing you like I do. And you are so much more to me than an asset. You... you are my closest companion, my dearest friend. How many times have we, together, seen each other through battle? I've told you before that I couldn't envision my dreams without you in them. I mean that with everything in me."

Byleth can feel tears stinging at the corner of her eyes. He means it. "Claude, I—"

Words fail her. She leans into him, leans into his touch, kisses him again and tries to tell him with her actions what her voice cannot yet say aloud, quietly afraid as she is of all that might come between them and the future they dream of. Enbarr still awaits, Edelgard does too, Dimitri is cold in his grave—

—but Claude is here, warm and solid and real, his heartbeat strong in his chest.

And as strong as the fear lingering in her is, she resolves with everything in her that she will keep him that way, until the day when that will no longer be of any concern. Everything they're fighting for, every plan for the future, every sacrifice and hardship, she has faced it all alongside him. He waited for her—he was there right on time when she came back—he never gave up on her, and now she has the chance to return the favor. If only she could truly hold time still, instead of merely turning it back, that they might have this lingering moment, these touches and sighs and whispers—

_I love you, _she thinks as Claude hums into her mouth and rends the world with the gentle trace of his thumbs across the skin at the corners of her eyes, wiping away her tears. _I love you. I love you—_

Her heart pulses. Once, twice, a third time, and a time after that, and another after that, and Byleth forgets to think as they melt into each other, two halves of a whole, two people whiling away the night and holding the stars in their cupped palms.

The dawn will come. But until then, they'll have to hold on tight to each other.


End file.
